FHTMS Gears up for “Almost, Maine”

For the past few months, student crew members and parent volunteers met at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School (FHTMS) Saturday afternoons to design and build the sets and props for the school’s play, “Almost, Maine.” The production, directed by FHTMS teacher David Bailey, is scheduled for Friday and Saturday, January 12 and 13, at 7 p.m. in the South Burlington High School auditorium.

While the cast is busy learning lines, developing characters, and working on timing, the crew assembles backdrops, attaches walls to walls to make buildings, builds furniture, and adds windows and doors to frames. Sixth-grader Braden Paquin is looking forward to his first tech week. “I was on crew for two years at Orchard School, but the builds for crew at the middle school are way more complex. Mr. Bailey creates really cool sets.”

“It’s really fun to be on the crew team and gives me experience making things with my own hands. Plus, all of the people of crew are like family,” explains Nadine Pensak, an eighth-grader in her third year on crew.

“Crew is really fun, because you get to create the world that actors perform in,” according to student Jasmyn Ikeda.

Crew members are often the unsung heroes of productions, but according to eighth-grader Claudia Schoenfeld, “That doesn’t take away from the experience.”

Once built, all the sets and props were taken to the high school in preparation for tech week, the week prior to opening night when cast, sets, props, lighting, and sound come together to whisk audiences away to a small town in Maine. As one of the play’s characters explains, “To be a town, you gotta get organized. And we never got around to gettin’ organized, so we’re just Almost.”

When the curtain goes up, audience members are sure to be impressed by the work of the student crew and cast bringing the production to life and creating an evening of love in a fictional small northern town called Almost.